Meta-Backed Hupo Reinvents Itself as an AI Sales Coaching Platform

When Singapore-based startup Hupo first arrived on the tech scene nearly four years ago, it looked very different from what it is today. Founded by CEO Justin Kim in 2022, the company initially launched under the name Ami, offering a mental wellness tool designed to help people manage stress, build better habits, and improve overall behavior. Yet while the mission was noble, the business struggled to find both product-market fit and a path to sustainable growth.

Kim’s early fascination with human performance, shaped by a lifelong interest in sports like basketball, football, and MMA, guided the company’s inception. In his view, understanding what enables people to perform at their best — whether on the field or in the office — was a universal question with deep business implications. That curiosity eventually pointed him toward the world of work, where performance often varied widely not because of effort but due to inconsistent training, feedback, and confidence.

A key early relationship that influenced Hupo’s evolution was its seed-stage backing from Meta. According to Kim, working with Meta helped shape some foundational principles that would later prove crucial: software must integrate seamlessly into users’ daily habits, and tools that feel judgmental or abstract rarely stick. Instead, effective technology should support real behavior in real contexts. This philosophy would lay the groundwork for Hupo’s pivot.

Rather than clinging to its original mission as a wellness app, Hupo’s leadership realized a deeper opportunity lay in helping teams perform where it matters most — on the job. The startup repositioned itself as an AI-driven sales coaching platform, specifically targeting complex, regulated industries like banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI). In these sectors, sales outcomes are crucial but often inconsistent, and traditional coaching simply cannot scale to meet the needs of distributed teams.

Kim is quick to point out that this shift wasn’t about abandoning the core idea of human performance; instead, it was about applying that idea where measurable impact could be delivered daily. “The core problem in both cases is performance at scale,” he told TechCrunch. In large financial organizations, managers can’t sit in on every sales call, and traditional training often arrives too late to influence key decisions. By contrast, AI that understands conversation context in real time can provide coaching in the moment, boosting consistency and quality across teams.

At the heart of Hupo’s platform is an AI engine that listens to live or recorded sales interactions and delivers tailored suggestions that improve outcomes. Instead of generic advice, the system analyzes what’s actually happening in conversations — whether it’s how an objection is handled, how a product feature is explained, or how compliance rules apply in a given scenario — and offers real-time guidance that improves performance on the fly. This means salespeople learn as they work, rather than through disconnected training sessions that are quickly forgotten.

This focus on contextual, conversational coaching has translated into strong early traction. Hupo recently announced a $10 million Series A round led by DST Global Partners, with participation from Collaborative Fund, Goodwater Capital, January Capital, and Strong Ventures, bringing its total funding to around $15 million since 2022. The fresh capital will fuel expansion of the product’s real-time coaching features, support enterprise-grade deployments, and accelerate go-to-market efforts — including an entry into the U.S. market planned for the first half of this year.

Despite being young, Hupo already counts several major players as customers across Asia and Europe. Clients include global financial institutions such as Prudential, AXA, Manulife, HSBC, Bank of Ireland, and regional players like Grab. According to Kim, many of these enterprise clients have expanded their contracts threefold to eightfold within six months, a sign that the value of scalable AI coaching resonates strongly in complex sales environments.

One of Hupo’s strategic advantages, according to its founder, is its deep vertical focus. Where many AI coaching startups start with a generic model and then retrofit it to different industries, Hupo trained its systems from day one on real financial products, typical customer objections, compliance requirements, and the specific sales patterns of regulated sectors. This industry-specific approach has helped overcome common barriers to adoption in large enterprises, where security, compliance, and measurable ROI are top priorities.

Kim’s personal background has also played a role in shaping Hupo’s direction. Before founding the company, he worked at Bloomberg, selling enterprise software to banks, asset managers, and insurers — giving him firsthand exposure to the complexities of regulated sales cycles. He later worked on product development at South Korean fintech Viva Republica (the company behind Toss), learning how user-centric technology can reshape traditional financial services. Those dual experiences inform Hupo’s unique intersection of domain expertise and AI technology.

Looking ahead, Kim says Hupo’s ambitions extend beyond sales coaching. The long-term vision is to help large teams perform at scale, delivering actionable insights and practical guidance that improve outcomes across entire organizations. Whether that means extending support to customer success teams, onboarding programs, or leadership development, the guiding principle remains the same: help people perform better in the moments that matter most.

In an era where AI continues to reshape how businesses train, manage, and empower teams, Hupo’s journey from wellness startup to enterprise sales coach highlights how contextual, real-time assistance — grounded in real human behavior — can unlock measurable performance gains. With fresh funding, strong enterprise traction, and a clear roadmap for expansion, the company looks well-positioned to redefine how coaching works in mission-critical business environments.